were impartial and just. The interference of the priesthood in civil and social matters was much checked; several church ceremonies, the encouragement of idleness or vice, had been suppressed; the employment of many labourers and artizans in public works, and the cheapness of provisions, which enabled the labour of three days to provide food for a week, had satisfied those classes to whom such advantages are the test of good government. The discontented belonged to another portion of the community, who were aggrieved by the employment of Germans in all the higher, and many of the inferior departments of administration. The head of the Milanese Church was acknowledged to be a liberal and a highly honourable man, but he was disagreeable to the nobility as a foreigner. The same dislike, and no little ridicule, attached to the Austrian principal of the university of Padua; and what made this preference of foreigners still more distasteful was, that, although the higher classes were excluded from employment at home, they were almost prohibited from seeking amusement or instruction abroad. Foreign travel was discouraged as much as possible, and, when a licence for that purpose was obtained, the term of absence was specified, and a positive promise exacted that the traveller would not hold intercourse with the diplomatic members of any court that he might frequent.

But even those Italians who were in public employment of an inferior grade partook in some degree of

the discontent of the upper classes. Their salaries were extremely small; a police agent, a custom-house officer, an attendant on the Court, had no more than a franc a day—hence not only their discontent, but their importunity with strangers. But it should not be forgotten that the pay of clerks in the public offices, of higher mechanics, such as engineers and superintendents in manufactories, was proportionably small. Three Austrian livres, about two shillings a-day, were considered good wages-four were never given; yet on that pittance this class of Milanese citizens contrive to frequent the restaurateurs and the theatres-it is true their wives lived at home on soup. Except in England, there is no city in Europe where so many well-dressed cleanly-looking people are to be seen as in Milan. In some subsequent visits I found very little if any change in the appearance or manners of the inhabitants. The glories of the Corso, the two-miled string of carriages, had survived, in 1845, the ruin of all their governments; the Scala opera-house was equally flourishing. The Milanese patrician, so early as in 1828, had forgotten, or seemed to have forgotten, the storms of 1821, and was much as I saw him at my first visit in 1816. The individuals were gone, but the fashions remained, somewhat, indeed, modified by English literature and English habits. There were four teachers of the English language in 1828. The booksellers' shops abounded with English works, both ancient and modern, both original and translated, some of them such as bigotry and despotism

could hardly be expected to tolerate: for example, Locke and Gibbon Sir Walter Scott had long been a favourite; Moore had general admittance since 1822; Lord Byron was prohibited, but in 1826 his 'Corsair was acted every night at the Scala. At that period the Anglo-American method of speedy and elegant writing was recommended in placards on every wall, and the cavaliers of the Corso, with English horses and English saddles, studiously imitated the English seat and the English pace: but even two years before, viz. in 1826, Count Strasoldo, in a state proclamation denouncing the black slave-trade, laid it down as an axiom in political morals, that "man instinctively feels he is his own property," a manifest copy from the Abbé Gregoire and Mr. Wilberforce, and, I should think, a very controvertible proposition, especially in the meridian of Milan.

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF ITALY.

During the days of the two short-lived republics, the higher classes of Lombardy showed very little sympathy with Frenchmen and French principles, and very few indeed were persuaded to partake of the fortunes of Napoleon at his first conquest of Italy. I heard an account of his proceedings at Milan from an eye-witness. One of his harangues was delivered from a balcony opposite to the Casa Castiglione, where my informant stood at the time and heard him. He told

the Milanese youth that "he would make something of them he would make them soldiers-and would lead them, in six months, as conquerors to the Tower of London." A member of that noble family heard him, and joined his banner; he was drowned. Madame Castiglione then foretold, from his deportment towards his officers and those about him, that he was only at the outset of his career: "This man," said she, "will not be content with being a general." After the complete subjection of Italy, and the consolidation of his power, Napoleon, though never popular with the Milanese patricians, worked, to some extent, a favourable change in their character. The extreme activity of his government partially communicated itself to those whose longcherished hereditary vice was laziness; and some of them condescended to become influential in the state, and useful in society. Many of the great nobles did still keep aloof from the new viceregal court, but some of the best and most active of the administration were of the highest class. Melzi, Duke of Lodi, was an able and an honest minister, and a vigilant superintendence was maintained over all the public departments. No less than a hundred clerks and others were employed in the Ministry of the Interior; four hundred were attached to the War Department these were all Italians; the Senate, the Council of State, the Metropolitan and Provincial Prefectures, all opened a career to the native community; and I was informed that, in Milan alone, there were eighteen hundred persons in

government pay: the army also, to a great degree, was national. This could not fail of producing a salutary influence with those who, for the first time, discovered that activity was profitable. The inevitable consequence ensued-men of considerable capacity appeared in every branch of administration, and a general spirit of emulation and enterprise was diffused amongst the northern Italians.

PRINCE EUGENE had been liked, but his popularity did not survive the campaign of Moscow, and his subsequent behaviour was unworthy of his former character. During the early part of his viceroyalty he had been much esteemed for a quality seldom found in men of high station and moderate capacity-he listened to good advice, and was thus enabled to extricate himself from many difficulties. His conduct towards the Pope, for example, showed how capable he was of reconciling the interests of Napoleon with the temper of those whom he was called upon to control. He seems, however, to have been directed no longer by the same good sense or the same wise counsellors, when, during the retreat from Russia, he studiously neglected his Italian generals, and thereby forfeited the attachment of those on whom he was chiefly to depend in the approaching struggle. Other causes are assigned for his decreasing popularity. Guicciardi mentions the inspection of the post-office correspondence, and Botta reckons the employment of Prina and Mejean, and the vigorous activity in raising the contingent for the cam